From The Nation: Terry Eaglton on Eric Hobsbawm.
Jesus fuck I wish this country could produce this sort of nasty educated wit, or import it, or at least get the damn point.

On immigrants and British culture: "Much the same happened in the literary arena, as the heights of "English" literature were effortlessly monopolized by a Pole (Joseph Conrad), three Americans (Henry James, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound) and five Irishmen (Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett). The Irish were expected to write most of England's literature for it, such being the burdens of empire, as well as supplying them over the years with rents, cattle and cannon-fodder."
Not bad for name dropping, and funny as hell.

And here's Hobsbawm himself on Israel:
"..the small, militarist, culturally disappointing and politically aggressive nation-state which asks for my solidarity on racial grounds,"

That about says it.